Europe's Melting Glaciers: Outer Mullwitzkees

HINTERBICHL, AUSTRIA - SEPTEMBER 08: Martin Stocker-Waldhuber (top), a glaciologist with the Austrian Institute for Interdisciplinary Mountain Research, and intern Jakob Balassa peer into a crevasse that is covered in dripping icicles on an upper portion of the Outer Mullwitzkees glacier on September 8, 2016 near Hinterbichl, Austria. The team was conducting its annual measurements as part of a study begun in 2006 to asses the rate at which the glacier is shrinking in depth, which team leader Martin Stocker-Waldhuber says is currently approximately one to 1.5 meters per year. The Outer Mullwitzkees, a relatively shallow glacier between 50 and 70 meters deep, is one of a constellation of glaciers in the Venediger Group of mountains near Grossvenediger peak in eastern Tyrol. While glaciers across Europe have been receding since approximately the 1870s, the process has accelerated since the early 1980s, a phenomenon many scientists attribute to global warming. The European Enivironmental Agency predicts the volume of European glaciers will decline by between 22% and 89% by 2100, depending on the future intensity of greenhouse gases. (Photo by Sean Gallup/Getty Images)